his parents and brothers had impressed very deeply with religious feelings, had drawn together, in Oxford, a small society of young men of similar views, who received the sacrament weekly at St. Mary's, and assembled daily in each other's rooms, for the purposes of prayer and study. It was natural that, on John's return to his fellowship at Lincoln College, he should be invited to join their party, and his superior age, though he too was very young, together with his station in the University, his character for learning, and, above all, his being already in priest's orders, combined as naturally to give him the direction of the little brotherhood. Nothing was farther from his thoughts, or theirs, than the idea of separation from the church; they were, indeed, completely high church in their principles and practices, with a certain leaning to popery which they had contracted from Thomas a Kempis, or, perhaps, from Law, and which led them into excesses of religious severity on which Wesley himself, in after life, looked back with some regret, and which absolutely terminated in the madness and death of one of their members, a Mr. Morgan. It was impossible that singularity of this kind, to which John Wesley added a remarkable plainness of dress, and an unusual manner of wearing his long flaxen hair, should not attract the notice, and draw down the indiscriminating ridicule of the young men by whom they were surrounded; and the name of methodists, (a term not taken, as is generally supposed, from the ancient school of physicians so called, but from a religious sect among the puritans of the 17th century,) was the least offensive and the most lasting of the many terms of mockery which were applied to them. But it is not true, (as has been often asserted,) that they were in any way molested by the public authorities either of the University or of the Church of England. Such a notion has, apparently, no better ground than a report, which at one time prevailed among the under-graduates, that the Dean and Censors of Christ Church were going to break up the godly club.' It is certain, however, that no interference of this kind took place, even when it might have been justified by the death of Mr. Morgan, and the reports by which that event was accompanied; on the contrary, they had the sanction and approbation of the Bishop of Oxford, in their practice of visiting and instructing the inhabitants of the Prison and Hospitals. They were all admitted to orders without difficulty or opposition, (Whitefield with particular favour and kindness by Benson, Bishop of Gloucester,) and their character for unusual piety was so far from being injurious to them, that it seems, in every instance, to have conciliated the good will of their ecclesiastical superiors, till they excited opposition by doctrines decidedly at variance with the prevailing opinions of the church. Wesley Wesley had, at this time, an offer of the living of Epworth on his father's resignation, and the good old man, who was now on the brink of the grave,, was very anxious that it should be accepted, not only for his son's sake, but that the good which he had himself done there might be perpetuated and extended by a successor of the same principles and piety, and that his wife and younger children might continue, after his death, to find a home in the house where they had so long resided. But the young ascetic was immoveable either by the wishes of his parents or the arguments of his elder brother Šamuel. He had imbibed a strong apprehension of the responsibility and temptations incident to the care of a parish and the intercourse with the world which it rendered necessary. He spoke as if his salvation was absolutely impossible except in that species of monastic life which he enjoyed with his devout associates at Oxford, who had only one work to do on earth ; who had absolutely devoted themselves to God, and took up their cross daily.' He shrunk in alarm from the charge of such a population as that of Epworth, exclaiming, "Two thousand souls! I see not how any man living can take care of a hundred! And above all, he said, that it was absolutely necessary for every Christian to suffer contempt, and that this was an advantage which he enjoyed to the full among those of his own age in Oxford. These arguments are, certainly, more characteristic of the man, than creditable to his judgment. It argued a mistrust of the divine protection as much as of his own strength, to suppose that more was necessary for the very being of his Christian life, than for the salvation of all the parish priests in England. 'If contempt were so necessary to him' (his brother Samuel smartly observed) he had only to go down to Epworth, where a course of singularities similar to those which he had practised at Oxford, would ensure his being, in a competent time, despised as much as his heart could wish.' But he argued, with more force, that a man must be esteemed in order to be useful;' and, if contempt were necessary to salvation, it is certain that Wesley himself was not saved, since, during by far the greater part of his life, he enjoyed an extent of power and popularity substantially greater than all the bishops in England put together. There is, in fact, no greater mistake, though, among austere and secluded religionists it is by no means an uncommon one, than that which supposes the persecution and mockery of the world to be a necessary not an incidental consequence of a sincere profession of Christianity, and that the esteem of men is not merely dangerous to, but absolutely incompatible with true religion. This opinion has had the effect of encouraging many in singularities highly injurious to the cause of truth, and in a spiritual pride yet more more dangerous to themselves, when they have magnified into persecution every little grievance to which, in their journey through life, the saint and the sinner are alike exposed; or when they have placed to the account of religion, those affronts which they have brought on themselves, and fancied that they were bearing the cross, when they merely suffered the consequences of their personal folly or vanity. And it has on the other hand, occasioned much severe and groundless disquietude to men of humble tempers and inoffensive deportment, who have been alarmed and surprised at finding themselves treated with respect and esteem, where they expected nothing but obloquy and injury. When we are cautioned to let our light shine before men that they may see our good works,' and to provide all things honest and of good report in the sight of all men,' it might be reasonably inferred that the prospects which are here held out of conciliating the good opinion of the world, were not altogether illusory, even if we were not elsewhere informed that, generally speaking, no one is likely to harm us, if we be followers of that which is good.' But as persecutions and obloquy, for the sake of religion, are really borne by many, and may possibly come to all, it is fit that all should be disciplined to expect and to endure them; and this, as we conceive, is the true and the only intelligible purport of the cautions of our Saviour. It is wise in him who prepares a young mariner for the duties of his profession, to describe to him before hand those storms which he must look to encounter; but it is neither wise nor grateful in him whose voyage has been calm and prosperous, to magnify every ruffling air into St. Paul's Euroclydon, or to impute to the severity of the weather and the frowns of Providence those accidents which have arisen from nothing but his own bad seamanship. As Wesley had made the whole affair a matter of religious casuistry, he appears to have paid no attention whatever to that which was uppermost in his father's mind, the interest of his mother and sisters. Yet when, sometime after, he was offered by Dr. Burton, the head of Corpus Christi College, the situation of chaplain and missionary in the new colony founded in Georgia by General Oglethorpe, he declined the offer, not only on those general grounds which had determined him to prefer Oxford to Epworth, but from an unwillingness to leave England during his mother's lifetime, alleging that he was the staff of her old age.' That high minded woman, however, herself put an end to his scruples, declaring that, if she had twenty sons, she should rejoice that they were all so employed, though she should never see them more.' His father was already dead, having enjoyed in a degree hardly to be surpassed, that calm and rational hope, which is the true euthanasia of a Christian. In Wesley's voyage to Georgia he was accompanied by his brother Charles, whom he had himself persuaded to enter into orders, and, contrary to the advice of Samuel (who seems to have feared that they would, by their mutual encouragement and example, foment that spirit of fanaticism which was the besetting danger of both,) to embark with him in his plan of converting the Indians. Charles, however, had no regular appointment as chaplain or missionary, and went out as private secretary to the Governor. John Wesley was, at this time, a confirmed ascetic to a degree which he never afterwards was. 'He had only,' (say his official biographers Dr. Coke and Mr. Moore,) attained to the spirit of bondage unto fear, and he found that all his senses were ready to betray him into sin, upon every exercise of them.' He, accordingly, left off the use of flesh and wine, relinquished one meal in the day, and slept on the floor instead of the bed of his cabin. He wrote in a spirit of similar austerity to his brother Samuel, exhorting him to banish the classic authors from his school and substitute the Christian works. He did not, however, himself neglect the help and guidance of learning in his scriptural studies, since every morning, from five to seven, he read the sacred volume, carefully comparing it with the writings of the earliest ages, that he might not lean to his own understanding.' Well had it been, had he always attended to such guides with equal diligence! When Wesley accepted the situation of chaplain to the colony, he seems to have supposed that his labours would be more among the Indians than the settlers. The duties and difficulties of a missionary were then but very imperfectly known among Protestants; and he pleased himself with the idea that he should preach to a people not yet beguiled by philosophy and vain deceit; and enforce to them the plain truth of God, without its being softened and rendered useless by the comments of men.' In his first interview with Tomo-Chichi, the chief of the Creek nation, he seems to have well understood how to address them in their own figurative and impressive manner. But to employ this talent to any general good effect, it was necessary to learn their language, and, strange as it may seem, Wesley never attempted this. He found, indeed, abundant occupation among the Christians of Georgia, and was easily induced, by successive trifling obstacles, to abandon all thoughts of that conversion of the heathen, which had been his main object in leaving England. His reception on commencing his public labours as chaplain was extremely encouraging. The inhabitants of Savannah attended church with laudable exactness, even on week days, and to the neglect of those amusements which were previously most fashionable in the place. Wesley obtained some signal triumphs over the pride of of rank and the love of dress both in his charity school and in his adult congregation; and though a clergyman who does his duty faithfully, may always lay his account to meet with occasional opposition and disappointment amid the motley crowd of a new colony, it is probable that he might have done abundant good, had he been content to attempt it in an usual manner, and had be borne in mind the wise counsel of Dr. Burton, to consider his parishioners as babes in their progress, and therefore to feed them with milk instead of strong meat. But Wesley was now a high churchman of the most intolerant character. In his zeal for the letter of the rubric he insisted on baptizing children by immersion instead of sprinkling. He refused to read the burial service over a dissenter, and repelled from the communion one of the most pious men in the colony, because he had been brought up a nonconformist, and would not submit to be rebaptized by an episcopally ordained minister. Following the original appointment of the church rather than its modern practice, he separated the morning service from the communion, performing them at different hours but what gave most offence, was his making his sermons so many satires on particular persons. All the quarrels of the town were, at length, imputed to his intermeddling conduct, and his scruples and peculiarities so perplexed the people, that they said (as a plain speaker told Wesley) that they could not tell whether he were Protestant or Papist, having never heard of such a religion before. ; The strangest, however, of all his actions, either in Georgia or during the whole course of his life, was his behaviour respecting a certain Miss Causton, the niece of the chief magistrate of the colony, to whom, after a long religious flirtation originally promoted by Oglethorpe, Wesley proposed marriage against the advice of most of his religious friends in the colony. Unexpectedly the lady rejected him, and was, shortly after, married to a Mr. Williamson. Wesley, however, still seems to have watched over her spiritual welfare with a peculiar and jealous anxiety, till, after some little quarrels, the result of advice obtruded on the one hand, and rejected, perhaps indignantly, on the other, he thought fit to repel her from the communion, till she should openly declare herself to have repented of certain faults which, without publicly stating them, he professed to have observed in her conduct. This unusual procedure set the whole colony in a flame. The lady. miscarried; and though she had the justice or the generosity to impute the accident to another cause, her friends were anxious to have it believed the consequence of the chaplain's bigotry. She was induced, however, to make an affidavit that Wesley had repeatedly offered her marriage, which was couched in language well calculated to produce a suspicion beyond what it absolutely asserted. |